Robbie Marcus: Very clear. I appreciate it. Thank you.
Shelley Thunen: Thank you.
Operator: All right. Thank you. One moment for our next question. Next question comes from the line of Larry Biegelsen of Wells Fargo. Your line is now open.
Simran Kaur: Hey, guys, thanks for taking the questions. This is Simran on for Larry. I just wanted to start off on your 2024 outlook. I know you’re not providing LAL versus LDD mix explicitly, but how are you thinking about LDD utilization in 2024? We’re conservatively forecasting a small step-down, but any reason utilization can’t grow year-over-year?
Shelley Thunen: Yeah, I think that utilization is a nice metric just in that anybody can calculate it, but it will vary throughout the year, because we calculated as the number of LALs implanted in a quarter divided by the LDD installed base in the previous quarter. If you have a very heavy LDD placement quarter and a seasonal quarter for LALs, you might see a little bit of a step-down. But overall, our goal is to increase that. But if we get very high LDD sales, that can mute it a little bit, while we don’t guide on that, as I mentioned to Steve’s question, that we expect LAL revenue to grow faster than LDD revenue.
Simran Kaur: Great. Thank you. And just to clarify on the phasing of sales throughout the year, it sounds like we should expect sequential growth quarter-over-quarter throughout 2024, including Q1?
Shelley Thunen: What we did guide is to sequential growth with seasonality, and where we said specifically that we would expect continued sequential growth despite seasonality in our LAL revenue.
Simran Kaur: Okay, perfect. And just in terms of your international business, how has the launch in Canada been progressing relative to your expectations? And will there be any contribution from new geographies in 2024?
Ron Kurtz: So, Canada has gone very well. We’re very pleased with the rollout in Canada, and that continues to go well. I think it’s a good marker for the importance that international will play over time. And we’re certainly considering other markets that we think will be particularly attractive to the LAL, and we’ll be talking more about those as the year progresses.
Simran Kaur: Great. Thank you.
Operator: All right. Thank you. One moment for our next question. Next question comes from the line of Ryan Zimmerman, BTIG.
Ryan Zimmerman: Hey, good afternoon. Thanks for taking the questions. Congrats on a strong year. Want to just start first with the LDD — the capital sales force. And you guys are leaving that sales force unchanged. Is there a point at which you reach kind of a peak sales rate per quarter in terms of LDD units just based on simply capacity, even if the demand is there, and where are we at relative to maybe at peak capacity in your view from the LDD sales force?
Shelley Thunen: Yeah, I think that as we look at the LDD sales force, these folks have developed a territory. Now, as you know, they typically start with their highest volume customers, customers that they know better. But their efforts are really enhanced by our marketing efforts, the ability to get out to shows. We do about 80 tabletop shows a year out in the territories and also they couple the LAL sales force on new accounts as well as potential new accounts. And so we’ll add people, if we see it’s necessary. But typically with capital equipment people, you kind of get the opposite effect, if you cut down their territories, because they’ve already put the money in and that doesn’t work real well. But we’ll always keep that ahead of ourselves.
But we don’t think like doubling the sales force just automatically doubles the placements. I think just continued market acceptance and knowledge about the LDD and them talking to peers, both at shows and one-on-one starts to, but we’ve seen the momentum build through the last several years.
Ron Kurtz: Yeah, and just to reiterate.
Ryan Zimmerman: Go ahead. Yeah.
Ron Kurtz: I’m sorry, Ryan, I was just going to reiterate, the LAL account team has grown, and they are involved with capital equipment sales as well, to a lesser degree, but they do receive part of their compensation from that.
Ryan Zimmerman: Okay. And then second question for you, Ron, bigger picture. When we think about the growth of the premium segment here, you talked about kind of where we’re at today, maybe 20% in the US, 10% globally. And the expectations are that that goes to 2x. When you think about those market forces that you talked about, I mean, is there any reason to think that that cadence from A to B is not evenly distributed over the next, call it 5 to 10 years. Is there anything in your mind that accelerates it or maybe hockey sticks it, if you will, on the later half of that time frame? Just trying to think about kind of the broader adoption in the premium segment there, as you guys continue to grow?
Ron Kurtz: Well, I mean, obviously we hope to be part of that driver by providing clinicians with tools that they can use to give their patients high-quality vision with very high consistency. And so I think that that has been a factor in holding back not all clinicians, but a number of clinicians from participating more widely in this market. Also, it’s an important component of our technology is that it involves optometry in a very meaningful way. And they are a huge part of the eye care community that up to now has had a relatively minor role in premium cataract surgery. So I think that those two factors are ones that will help to drive the overall market and obviously fuel our growth as well.
Ryan Zimmerman: Understood. Thank you.
Operator: All right. Thank you. One moment for our next question. Next question comes from the line of Craig Bijou of Bank of America. Please go ahead.
